do students who are taught by using Small Group Discussion have better reading comprehension than them who are taught by using conventional technique of second year students of Islamic Senior High School 3 Padang

Download English Thesis Full Version Free below

PREVIEW

CHAPTER I

                                                  INTRODUCTION                                    

1. Background of  the Problem

English is really important today and new generation should master this language. Therefore, in Indonesia, English is taught at all levels of the school starts from Elementary School into Senior High School. It has been taught in total different of lesson hour at every level. At the Senior High School, it has been taught at least four hours of lesson in two meetings a week.

English has four important skills, which consists of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Related to this idea, Kustaryo (1988) says one of the most important skills in learning the language besides listening, speaking and writing is reading. Reading is essential parts and one of the most strategic means of getting information. Getting information by reading is more effective than listening, especially for English as foreign language (EFL).

Reading is the most important in language study. Someone who wants to study English should be able to read English well. It is also a tool for gathering information as well as for enjoyment.  Hence, it enables us to add our knowledge because the more we read the more knowledge we will get. 

Reading involves extremely high percentage of the students’ daily activities. Ideally, students who have finished their studies from Senior High Schools will have substantial competence of reading is that the students are able to comprehend the text.

Based on researcher observation at Islamic High School 3 Padang in academic 2010-2011 particularly the second years, teachers only focus on the text book provided by the school in library and student work sheets and then design material from the book. English particularly reading still seems as a difficult subject for the students. The teacher should design materials that interesting for them, based on the student’s needs and their environment. The material should be as authentic and meaningful as possible to their real-life settings.

When the students find some difficult words while reading text, they are lazy to continue reading it anymore because they did not know the meanings of the words. They are also lazy to consult the dictionary. The students tend to ask their teachers to translate the words and explain the materials to them in details. They are less enthusiastic, difficult to catch ideas, because take too long to read the words, leaving little energy for remembering and understanding what was read

Furthermore, teaching techniques which used by the teachers in the classroom can also determine the success or the failure in the teaching and learning of language process. Then students need the technique that can live up the classroom's atmosphere so that they will not easily get bored in learning. The monotonous teaching technique, where the teachers dominate the class, will make them bored and decrease their motivation in the learning process so that the studying process is not interesting for them. It implies that motivation holds a very significant role in determining the success of learning.

Teacher should stimulate students’ motivation in appearing their awareness and interest in learning. Brown (1994) defines motivation as the extend to which the learners make choices about goals to pursue and the effort they would devote to that pursuit. He divides the motivation into two parts, the intrinsic and the extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation arises from the learners themselves while extrinsic motivation arises from influence by others. The use of an appropriate and interesting teaching technique can become a sort of an extrinsic motivation for the students. It can make the students more conscious, or motivated in learning. This should be considered by the teacher. Indeed, there are various kinds of teaching techniques that the teachers can apply to motivate the students to learn. One of them is Small Group Discussion Technique.

In teaching reading for senior high school nowadays, students learn many kind of the texts specifically about generic structure, grammatical feature, and purpose in order to comprehend the texts. It was matched with the last curriculum in our country namely KTSP (kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan) that was decided by BSNP (2006) (badan standar nasional pendidikan). The curriculum offers more freedom for the teachers and the schools to elaborate they own curriculum such as matching with what student’s needs and environment where they leave and using various methods and techniques while teaching, those all include in a syllabi.

From the syllabi, particularly for reading for grade XI, it has standard competence such as understanding the meaning of short functional text, transactional and simply essay narrative, spoof, and hortatory exposition in daily activity context and to access knowledge. Then indicator namely:

1.      Reading aloud the text with good pronounce and intonation

2.      Identify the topic from the text

3.      Identify the information from the text

4.      Identify the meaning of the words and sentences of the text

5.      Identify the characteristics or type of the text

6.      Identify purpose of the text.

In reading process, students must know what they will do while reading a text so that they get information that written and unwritten of a text.

In fact, at grade XI Islamic Senior High School 3 Lubuk Minturun of Padang, the teacher taught reading 80 minutes in a meeting.  In pre-reading, the teacher motivated and encouraged the students’ enthusiastic to the topic.  In whilst reading, the teacher gives some text to the students and then gives oral and written question based on the reading passage.  At the end in post-reading the teacher correct the students’ answer together.

It indicated that students got low mark in daily examination. It can be see in the table as follow:

Table 1

Mean of Students’ Score in Daily Examination

Class	XI IPA	XI IPS 1	XI IPS 2	XI IAI
Listening	60.5	60.0	60.5	60.5
Speaking	60.0	60.0	60,0	60,0
Reading	60,2	58.5	60,0	58,0
Writing	65,0	61,0	60,0	65.0

Source: teacher’s book mark at Islamic Senior High School 3 Padang

From the table above, it can be seen that students at grade XI of Islamic Senior High School 3 Padang did not have satisfying result in reading comprehension. We can conclude that most of the students get low mark in reading skill and it should be improved. Thus, the teacher must prepare many things to make the students get better reading comprehension.

Technique has important role in comprehending the text. The students need different techniques in their learning activities. One of the techniques is Small Group Discussion; students are divided into small groups which consist of 3-6 participants.

By applying this technique in the class, there are many advantages of using this technique. Such as, it makes students have freedom to express their idea without feel nervous and happily, encourages students to organize their thinking by comparing ideas and interpretations by each other and create more comfortable situation, provides the opportunity for sharing of ideas and concerns, fosters positive peer support and feelings of belonging and it is not monotonous although apply in the large class. It is expected to be a good technique to improve student’s reading comprehension.

Based on the description above, the researcher was interested in conducting the research of the use of Small Group Discussion Technique in teaching reading comprehension especially the second year student of Islamic Senior High School 3 Padang.

2. Identification of the Problem

Based on the explanation above, there are several problems appear in reading activity. It comes from teacher and students. The problem come from the teacher such as the teacher don’t use various technique, less of using media, and designing material not interesting for student. Teacher should have a great way to make the students’ interest in learning and reduce the laziness of the students.

The conventional technique does not create students’ interest to study because it makes them tired and bored. If the learning activities are not attractive for them, it decreases their motivation to study.

Beside that, the problem arises from the student namely many of students come from low mark graduation, have lack motivation in learning English, and the ability in comprehending the text is lower. Thus, to reach out for and touch reading indicators is far from hope.

Small Group Discussion Technique is one of the most techniques which can use in teaching reading. The researcher suggests for implement this technique in teaching reading instruction. I wish to know whether the use of Small Group Discussion Technique can improve students’ achievement on reading comprehension.

3. Limitation of the Problem

There are many techniques that can be used in increasing students’ reading comprehension such as mapping, sequencing, cloze procedure, summarizing, small group discussion, etc. This research focuses study about the effect of Using Small Group Discussion Technique in teaching reading comprehension on narrative, spoof and hortatory exposition text based on reading indicator especially identifying topic, main idea, word reference and inference, location information, synonym and antonym, generic structure and purpose of the text of second year students (eleventh grade) of Islamic Senior High School 3 Padang

4. Formulation of the Problem

Related to the limitation above, the problem was formulated as follow: do students who are taught by using Small Group Discussion have better reading comprehension than them who are taught by using conventional technique of second year students of Islamic Senior High School 3 Padang?

Specifically, the problems of this research are:

1.      Does small group discussion technique improve the students' reading comprehension especially in aspect topic, main idea, word reference, location information, synonym and antonym and inferences?

2.      How are students’ responds toward Small Group Discussion Technique which is applied by the researcher?

5. The Purpose of the Study

In general, the purpose of this study is to identify student’s achievement in reading, find out the effect of Using Small Group Discussion Technique on second years students’ reading comprehension. Specifically this study is aimed to;

1.    Know whether Small Group Discussion Technique improve           students’ reading comprehension components such as topic, main          idea, word       reference, location information, synonym and               antonym and             reference.

2.    Describe how the students’ responds toward Using Small group    Discussion technique in teaching reading.

6. Significance of the Research

The outcome of this study is to give some contribution to the English teachers to enrich their knowledge about the techniques of language teaching, one is Small Group Discussion techniques in English teaching.

It is also expected that this research will give benefit for the English department students of IAIN Imam Bonjol Padang as a candidate of English